What Is Harriet Jacobs Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl?

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Slavery in the middle of the 19th century was well known by every American in the country, but despite the acknowledgment of slavery the average citizen did not realize the severity of the lifestyle of the slave before slave narratives began to arise. In Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Harriet Jacobs uses an explicit tone to argue the general life of slave compared to a free person, as well as the hardships one endured on one’s path to freedom. Jacobs fought hard in order to expand the abolitionist movement with her narrative. She was able to draw in the readers by elements of slave culture that helped the slaves endure the hardships like religion and leisure and the middle class ideals of the women being “submissive, past, domestic, …show more content…

The second Great Awakening led to the belief of hope in the slaves lives to eventually escape the horrors of the South. Harriet Jacobs believed that Christianity was used by masters to reason their wrongdoings and prevent people from mobilizing emancipation of the slaves. The plantation owners allowed ministers to go into the slave quarters to teach them religion in the hope they would show them to love God, and obey masters, but instead they got that God keeps score and we should find our “Promise land of our emancipation (Vaught Lecture 20). Harriet Jacobs grew up valiant as, “ She was usually very quiet in her demeanor; but if her indignation was once roused, it was not very easily quelled.” (Jacobs Page 54). This assesses how she was different once again by possessing a passion of not being submissive and having her own voice. The words that came out of religious talks gave her an idea of how wrong slavery was religiously as well as morally. Religion is effective in mobilizing the women because it allows women to have the hope and belief that they are greater and can endure the pain together through God’s grace.The plantation owners who have used religion on the basis of God made everyone this way. This is not what the preachers had intended, but taught they were able to mobilize the women to fight for their freedom and seek to go to the

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